To generally walk for blind person to a desired place, the blind person have to both detect a protrusion of the induction blocks paved in the sidewalk using a walking cane in order to perceive an obstacle around the current place and walk to a desired place. These conventional methods could not accurately provide the desired current location information and the walking direction to the blind person. If a blind person goes to a specific location for the first time, someone have to guide the location or inform the location information since the blind person is only obtained from neighbors for the corresponding location information.
Until to present time, a plurality of induction blocks are paved in the middle of the sidewalk to inform the warning state and guide to the specific location in a crosswalk, a subway passenger door, a stair or etc.
The conventional induction blocks are, however, used as a rubber, a stainless steel, a plastic, or a porcelain tile, which are different with the general flooring materials, and the blind person may perceive the protruding portion of the induction block by using the walking cane or the his or her feet. In addition, the blind person may perceive the surroundings through the sounds and sensations generated and sensed as the blind person touches the obstacle or drags on the blocks using his or her walking cane.
At this time, the blind person may sensuously perceive the obstacle only through a protruding shape paved in the baille blocks for touching with the walking cane. In this way, there are 3 types of messages that will be perceived by the shape of the protruding shape. When the blind person actually walks to the desired location, there are problems that the blind person may perceive the 3 types of message slowly or inaccurately.
Up to now, the location information for providing to the blind person is tactile information such as baille plates and auditory information such as voice and sound. The auditory information is quickly and accurately transmitted compared to the tactile information. Recently, techniques of receiving the location information obtained for oneself have been studied.
On the other hand, as a prior art of a walking guide mechanism for a blind person, it is disclosed in Korean utility model registration No. 20-0203332, which includes an ultrasonic generating device and a vibrating device in a walking cane, wherein the ultrasonic generating device perceives the obstacle by using the ultrasonic wave and the vibrator is vibrated when the obstacle is perceived, thereby the walking guide mechanism can inform the obstacle information to the blind person. The ultrasonic generating device can easily perceive the obstacle placed in near to guide to the desired direction for the blind person. There is a problem that the blind people may be confused in a place where many people is crowded in the specific place since the walking guide mechanism can not be able to distinguish between the obstacles and people.
To solve the problems of the prior technology, it is disclosed in Korean Registered Patent No. 10-0647069, which can perform voice guidance by reading the location information with a non-contact manner from RFID tags which are embedded into the blocks, respectively. That is, two functions are further included to this technology of both detecting the reflecting induction path in the cane regardless of contact and non-contact manner by forming an infrared reflection path in an induction path and guiding the walking direction by moving up, down, left, or right direction of the walking cane.
In a walking guidance system for a blind person disclosed in Korean Registered Patent No. 10-0647069, since both the RFID tags are embodied into the blocks of the sidewalk and a RFID reader is installed in the lower part of the walking cane, the location information for up, down, left, or right directions is guided with voice information by emitting radio signals through an antenna of the RFID reader installed in the cane and reading the location information from the RFID tag embedded in a near block, as the blind person walks to the desired place.
The walking guidance system for the blind person still have problems that of: (1) not guiding the way in detail to the desired place but simply presenting up, down, left, or right directions at a junction in the road; (2) not normally guiding the way when the walking guidance system is not exactly detected the blind person in the result of confusing up, down, left, or right direction based on the entered direction; and (3) not easily perceiving that how far away the junction and the danger area from the blind person or how can find the exact walking direction to reach the desired place.